I picked up Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey with the hope that it would be like the 13 Alabama Ghosts books I remember so fondly as a child (they still have the first in the series at the public library in my hometown). I don't fully believe in ghosts but I do fully enjoy reading ghost stories. Tales of haunted places in particular are fascinating because they're usually told with a kernel of truth at the center. However, Dickey seems to contradict himself at every turn in this book by retelling these ghost stories and then almost immediately debunking them. Further compacting the confusion, each chapter ends with a somewhat mystifying takeaway about why there seems to be so many 'ghosts' and 'haunted places' in the United States. (And this is despite the U.S. as we know it being a relatively young country.) He covers the gamut of places that could possibly be haunted. There's the typical cemeteries and old houses but there's also factories and even the rarer entire city haunting (Detroit for example). Overall, I didn't feel satisfied because I think I was hoping for less analysis and more storytelling. I suppose this might be of interest in terms of a tour guide for places to check out yourself but it wasn't my cup of tea. 4/10

Of possible interest: Dickey is a member of the Order of the Good Death started by Caitlin Doughty which I'm sure you'll all remember from earlier blog posts. I have to say that I didn't find his writing nearly as compelling as hers. :-/

Few presidents have fallen as far in terms of their reputation as has Calvin Coolidge. A popular president during his time in the White House, his standing plummeted with the onset of the Depression and the retroactive discrediting of his administration’s policies that were associated with it. Yet in recent years a number of conservative writers have challenged this view, offering a contrasting interpretation of Coolidge as a presidential paragon. In this respect Amity Shlaes is merely the latest in a long line of writers stretching from Thomas Silver to Robert Sobel who seek to rehabilitate Coolidge’s historical reputation so as to make him a model of presidential leadership for our own times.

Yet it seems that the only way that Shlaes can achieve this goal is by ignoring the many criticisms directed against Coolidge’s presidency. Rather than acknowledging any role that his low-tax, minimalist-regulation agenda might have played in fueling the speculative mania that led to stock market crash of 1929 or the depression that followed, she prefers to depict his administration as having achieved a perfect economic environment that was humming along smoothly when the keys were handed over to his successor. Throwing Herbert Hoover under the bus by blaming him for the collapse that followed is not only grossly unfair, it defies the evidence of an economy in the 1920s that was nowhere near as healthy as Shlaes would like to admit. Moreover, it undermines her goal, as rather than give Coolidge’s achievements a full reexamination that would address the criticisms she does little more than offer a selective portrait that only serves to reaffirm the beliefs of the like‑minded.

This is unfortunate considering the effort she put into her work. For despite Shlaes’s considerable research in the papers of Coolidge and his contemporaries, her overall result adds little to the case made in previous efforts to redeem Coolidge and his presidency. Because of this, readers seeking to learn more about Coolidge would be better served by turning to Sobel’s far superior Coolidge: An American Enigma for an understanding of our 30th president’s life and career rather than Shlaes’s hefty tome – which, for all its size, proves in the end to be disappointingly hollow.

This is a book for anyone who wondered about the lines on the maps of the United States. In it Andro Linklater, a British writer and journalist, provides a history of the surveying of America. This is necessarily a two-part task, as not only does he describe the development and importance of surveying in shaping America, but it also requires him to explain the simultaneous development of uniform measurement in the Western world. For while people were familiar with units of measurement, those units themselves were not standardized, as lengths, along with weights and volume differed from place to place during the colonial period.

Yet the colonists already had access to the first standard measurement, the 22-foot-long chain introduced by the 17th century mathematician Edmund Gunter. His chain was the first element of precision that made the surveying – and through that, the selling – of the vast American territories England claimed in North America. Linklater describes this tandem development well, conveying both the importance of surveying and measurement in shaping the history of the country, as well as the numerous frustrations involved in getting it right. What began as an often haphazard assessment gradually became a more professional, systematic approach by the mid-19th century, creating the checkerboard pattern and straight lines visible from the skies overhead today.

Linklater’s book is a readable history of a mundane yet critical aspect of American history. With a scope spanning from Tudor England to a land office in modern-day Sacramento he conveys something of the long process of development that brought us to where we are now. Yet his examination of surveying rests in a bed of outdated interpretations about American history. These are minor and do little to effect the author’s argument, yet they are a weakness that diminishes from the overall value of the book. All of this makes Linklater’s book a useful look at a long overlooked element shaping American history, yet one that is strongest when focusing on its main subject and not when discussing American history more broadly.

For the past decade, “The American Presidents” series has churned out a series of biographies of our nation’s leaders written by a diverse range of authors, from historians who draw upon their expertise to inform their interpretation of their subject, to more eclectic writers who inform their efforts with a sometimes refreshingly new perspective. Alan Brinkley fits squarely into the first category: a longtime scholar of 20th century America, he brings the skills and knowledge gained a lifetime of study to this sprightly book on John F. Kennedy. His perspective is critical but not unfavorable; while acknowledging Kennedy’s many gifts, he describes how they served to sustain his popularity through the numerous setbacks he suffered as president. In this respect, the power of his image rested less on his actual accomplishments, but on what he represented, both as a leader and the “transformative moment” during which he served as president.

Such analysis explains Kennedy’s enduring hold on our historical imagination and points to the value of the book as a study of his life. While hardly the first short biography of Kennedy, Brinkley’s book surpasses previous works of its type such as and thanks to its author’s analysis and incorporation of recent revelations about Kennedy’s poor health. For anyone seeking an perceptive and readable introduction to the life and career of America’s 35th president, this is the book to read.

Though often a lone dissenter from the prevailing legal thought of his time, the reputation of John Marshall Harlan has enjoyed considerable rehabilitation since his death. Best known for his criticism of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, his opinions in that and other cases have come to be seen by many legal scholars as precursors to the liberal jurisprudence of the twentieth century. Capping this new appreciation of Harlan’s work was Loren P. Beth’s biography of the Supreme Court justice, which offers an examination of both Harlan’s life and his jurisprudence.

Beth divides his analysis into three parts. The first two are biographical and chronological, examining his life both before and on the Court. Much of the information about his life before his selection to the court comes from reminisces written by Harlan and his wife Malvina, and Beth often includes large sections from them in his text. The Harlan that emerges in these pages is an extremely political man, one who was active in the dramatic struggles of mid-19th century politics. Starting as a Whig, he drifted in the unstable Kentucky party political environment before finally becoming a Republican in 1868. Though unsuccessful in two campaigns for the governorship of Kentucky, Harlan’s efforts on behalf of the party in his state helped make him a national political figure, leading to his nomination to the Court in 1877.

The second part of the book, which looks at Harlan’s family life, his relationships with his justices, and his role in the politics surrounding the Court, serves as a useful bridge to the final section, which addresses his jurisprudence. Here Beth analyzes his decisions by topic, grouping them into categories so as to identify the underlying legal philosophy that collectively they reveal. While these chapters are informative, they do not succeed in Beth’s goal, as illustrated by his subtitle, of demonstrating that Harlan’s decisions reflected Whig political ideology, nor does the author reconcile the many inconsistencies and contradictions that existed between the Harlan’s life and his jurisprudence. This, along with the poor editing (there are numerous minor factual errors throughout the book, particularly regarding dates), make for the book that is a useful introduction to Harlan’s life but not the thorough analytical study that the justice deserves.

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